With the turn of the new year coming, many business will be in the process of planning their marketing budgets. Brand new businesses, old businesses, and everything in-between will try and get the word out to potential customer to give them service. It is up to the decision makers to invest media products where they would like to do branding. Will it be outdoor billboards, newspaper, magazines, radio or will this possibly be the year where you turn to a paid digital solution? First of all, you need to be in as many places as your budget allows. If you are not using marketing dollars effectively to get in front of as many potential customers in your target market, you are missing out on potential sales. Depending on the customers you want to attract spend money in the media and publications where you want to be seen. If it is time for your digital switch, what do you think of when “digital marketing” run through your head? Is it Facebook, Twitter, websites, search engine marketing, or do you think of online display?
As far as Facebook and Twitter goes, every business should have one. Actually the most effective way is to use a Blog and sync it to post to Facebook and Twitter. If you do not update Facebook and Twitter it can actually hurt your digital presence Blogging creates back links to your website increasing your organic rankings on Search Engines and it can be done all for free but, I have talked about this in the past, today, I am here to talk about branding.
Only 5% of the time someone is online they are searching or on a search engine. The other 95% of the time potential customers are online are on other websites like weather.com or MSN.com whatever they may prefer. Think about how a billboard or magazine works. With billboards you try to attract people to your business because they are driving by over and over and over again branding your business and eventually driving customers through the door. With magazines branding for a business is placed inside because the people that the magazine attracts are the people you want to come to your business have similarities. Great right, but you knew that already so, I am going to get to the point. With online display you can use the internet as your magazine and your road just like magazines and billboards do. Online display can put your creative ad on websites that target the customers you want based on their search habits. If you’re a financial planner would you not want to target someone who visits yahoo finance everyday? Of course you would. It works in the same way a billboard or a magazine would work but, it is just online. You can target people in a specific geography and put ads on the websites that your potential customers visit the most. Most ads are clickable to your website as well however, that is not the point for online display. Display is for branding. When someone finally needs your services they think of you because they have seen your ad over and over while checking the weather each day before they go to work. The pricing is no more expensive than any magazine or billboard you would spend marketing dollars on and, because it is online the results can be tracked. Display is sold on the number of monthly impressions or how many people will see your ad on a website each month. So you know exactly how many people will come in contact with your ad each month and also how many people went to your website from the ad. Online display, in local markets, is the next big breakthrough in local marketing.
If 2013, is the year you decide to put some marketing dollars in a digital service consider online display and brand you business online.
